


Layers Intact

by rokhal



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Abusive Relationship, Episode: s07e02 Hello Cruel World, Gen, Hellucinations, Post-Hell, Self-Harm, comment meme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-02
Updated: 2013-02-02
Packaged: 2017-11-27 20:44:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/666307
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rokhal/pseuds/rokhal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lucifer thinks he has Sam whipped. Sam has developed a work-around. It's still torture.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Layers Intact

Dean was asleep, or maybe he was dead.

He looked dead. Sam remembered watching him drift off on the couch, bum leg scraping back and forth against one of the arms until Dean finally gave up, tossed a flannel shirt over his exposed toes, and dragged the throw blanket over himself, and and Sam hadn't heard any screaming or gurgling in the minutes between fixing up some of Rufus' thirty-year-old lasagna and wandering back to the living room, gnawing on a rectangle of freeze-dried peaches, to find the blanket flung back and Dean's throat gaping open all the way down to the spine.

Sam forced himself to swallow. The room didn't show signs of a struggle. The windows and doors were intact. Lucifer was hiding, but that didn't mean he wasn't there -- not there. 

Blood poured down the couch cushions and filled the cabin with a heady tang.

He could wake Dean up. Of course, maybe Dean could wake up and Sam wouldn't see him, or Dean would wake up and Sam would see vampire fangs sprouting from his gums and try to kill him with the fire poker, or Dean wouldn't wake up, or Dean would decide Sam was about to snap and wouldn't risk sleeping until tomorrow night. Sam shakily set down his wafer of dried peaches and dug his thumb punishingly into his palm. 

It was possibly the slowest-healing wound he'd ever had, deep and infected and bruised and constantly broken and re-broken, but it was healing. Its jagged and imperfect ache had eased and grown familiar. 

He still smelled blood.

Sam heaved a soft breath and didn't look at the couch. He needed something stronger; he was developing a tolerance. Goddamnit. Lucifer had known that Sam knew about Alistair and his sick continuing education program down under, and had indulged Sam's curiosity because if there was anything Lucifer loved, it was leading Sam's flaws to their horrifying conclusions, and so Sam knew a few principles of the art and science of pain. One of the first of those was to work with the body and not against it: that the intact body had the greatest capacity for agony.

Or like Lucifer put it, "We always lick every layer of the Tootsie Pop."

Sam went back to the kitchen and looked under the sink. There was half a package of steel wool under there. He grabbed a pad, and a bottle of mustard from the fridge, and rolled up his sleeve to the elbow.

"Look at you," Lucifer cooed over his shoulder.

Sam froze, wanting to elbow him away, but knowing that if he tried that, he'd hit him. Touching his hallucinations was the last thing he wanted.

Lucifer rested both hands on the back of his neck and began to dig at the knots in his muscles with strong tangible thumbs. Sam gulped, took a measured breath, and dragged the steel wool firmly down the inside of his arm.

"Aw, look how vain." Lucifer's breath tickled his ear, and Sam felt his whole body tense, even as his mind grew heavy and slow. The drag of the steel wool was thin and distant through the adrenaline. "Come on, Sammy. What's one more scar? Not like you've never seen under there before."

Sam had enough scars. Breaks in the skin meant infection and immobility and some statistic about the strength of scars never catching back up to the original flesh. 

"Don't tell me you're scared," Lucifer wheedled. "You're one badass mofo. Remember how I had you peel the nerves off the inside of your ribs with your fingernails?" 

Sam remembered. For an instant there was wet blood all over the kitchen, black and rotting, all his, because it'd been a while since the archangels had had the whim to clean up after themselves. 

"I love that you did that for me." Lucifer stroked his hair, his fingers firm and dry, each follicle they shifted pinging back to Sam that they had been touched. "Really makes me feel appreciated, knowing I could motivate you to work yourself over that well. It's very gratifying. Real ego boost."

Sam's forearm was bright pink and glistening in places in the path of the scouring pad. He squeezed the mustard over his skin, then shook the bottle when nothing came out.

Lucifer leaned over him, his chest pressing warm into the back of Sam's neck. "I could watch that every day," he crooned.

Sam squeezed the mustard and smeared it on like aloe. "Watch this."

The sore skin burned. Sam hissed through his teeth and leaned over the table, pounding his fist into his own thigh. Sour pains shocked through his shoulder and his entire arm, his wrist muscles cramped, a strange exhilaration shot through his guts, and his nausea disappeared. Parts of his abraded skin felt hot, itchy, cold, bubbling, thrumming, peeling; it was disorganized and faulty and very, very human. He could practically feel his own soul rattling within his bones.

The spice of mustard hid the savor of blood. Sam stood and looked at the couch, where Dean murmured and shifted in his sleep, throat stubbled and clean.

He rinsed his arm off, but the sting remained, his skin still raw and tender and the mustard soaked in. There was a reason it was used in chemical weapons. It might be hours before the pain faded enough to let him sleep.

Sam caught a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye, but it was nothing: nerves, a hallucination of a hallucination. He thought of what Lucifer had done, and what he'd done to be allowed to escape Lucifer for a few hours, and decided that he could handle this. He could carry Tabasco in his coat pocket, bite open his cheek, and take a swig. He could make a shallow wound somewhere, shallow enough to stay unhealed for years without consequences. He didn't have to destroy himself like a trapped fox gnawing its own leg off.

But he could. He had.

Sam woke up his IPad and settled down with his military-issue lasagna, steadily ignoring the sense of being watched.


End file.
